Design with Nature

Ian McHarg's Design with Nature revolutionized landscape planning just at the time when the modern built environment was being recognized for its devastating effects on natural systems. McHarg devised techniques for planners to envision not just the finished product of human development, but its complex interaction with watersheds, wildlife habitat, viewscapes and anything else that could be represented as a layer on a map. Fast forward to today....Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are complex databases that organize information into the "layers" that McHarg proposed. GIS analysis has found its way into urban planning, oil spill response, wildfire management, epidemiology, endangered species management, socio-economic analysis and many other forms of spatial planning and design. Maps that are products of GIS analysis are digital versions of the tissue and mylar overlays of McHarg's vision and technique. This book is essential reading -- not because planners aren't using its ideas (almost universally, with GIS, they are) but because they don't understand GIS's debt to McHarg's pioneering thinking.

My husband is a landscape designer and architect. So, he loves this stuff! I bought it for him as one of his birthday gifts. He has been wanting something of high quality and loves McHarg. I would recommend this book. We keep it on the coffee table because the pictures are wonderful and the design shows through. My husband and I love it!

Recently re-issued in a 25th-anniversary edition, this book has obviously retained its position. Why? Because it is *the* place to begin an environmental impact statement. It should be on the bookshelf, and engraved in the heart and mind, of anyone connected with, or concerned about, planning for the future.McHarg takes the simple idea of overlay maps--which may contain any type of information--and builds up a procedure for making the difficult trade-offs involved in resolving competing ideas about land use.No local community should be without a set of McHarg overlays. Any citizen group concerned about the actions of a 'developer' should be able to prepare its own overlay for the town's McHarg base map, showing its assessement of areas that need protection and areas that are suitable for the proposed use. This may not make everyone happy, but it at least guarantees that the issues and specific sites are understood by all, and that specific concerns have been fairly addressed.Buy this book for your town planner.

This was an important piece in the development of ecological perspective for urban/environmental design and planning proffessions. It is a classic and should be familiar to anyone concerned with environmental issues as they relate to development.

I can't believe I am the first to review this book. It was one of the most important books in my library when it first came out over 25 years ago and I still refer to it once a year or so. Ian McHarg pioneered both a "logical" way to approach human enterprise within the natural world, and the analytic/presentation methodology which is now used by virtually all planners. At least the technicals aspects of the methodology are used; the real struggle to understand the principals behind prioritizing land use is still ongoing. If you're looking for some clear and easy to understand directions to help get us out of the mess we've made of our world, "Design With Nature" is a good place to start.